Manufacturers that provide products to customers routinely rely on suppliers or vendors for components (e.g., subassemblies, parts, ingredients, etc.) of the finished product. For example, the finished product may be manufactured by assembling various components that the manufacturer obtains from one or more suppliers. As such, the manufacturer's ability to produce the product is dependent upon any one supplier's ability to produce a particular component of the product. A problem arises, then, when a supplier of a component stops producing the component. In such situations, the manufacturer's ability to produce the product is hindered.
Quite often, a supplier of a component will inform the manufacturer that the supplier intends to stop providing a component before the supplier actually stops supplying the component. In such a situation, the manufacturer may attempt to forecast its future need of the component and make an end-of-life purchase (also called a last time buy) to meet the forecasted demand.
However, it is normally difficult to accurately forecast the projected need for any component. This is because a manufacturer can only predict the future demand for the product that utilizes the component, and that future demand may change due to any number of market forces. Moreover, even if the manufacturer can accurately predict the future demand, the manufacturer still is faced with making a one-time purchase of a potentially large amount of components. This can be problematic in that the manufacturer must expend a large amount of money to pay for the components up front, and must store and maintain an inventory of the component as it is used during future manufacturing of the product. Furthermore, there is the possibility that the forecasted need never materializes, and the manufacturer has purchased components that it no longer needs.
In order to provide some protection to demand changes and/or forecasting inaccuracies, a bank of components is sometimes created. For example, in the field of semiconductor fabrication, a supplier may agree to hold the component in die form in a die bank, and provide finished components via purchase orders from manufacturers until the die bank inventory is depleted.
However, this approach also presents problems for a manufacturer that utilizes the component in manufacturing a product. For example, plural manufacturers may have the ability to purchase the component from the finite amount of component available in the bank. As such, a particular manufacturer may be left without enough component if the other manufactures deplete the bank before the particular manufacturer can secure enough component from the bank.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.